Italy, 1920s:
Mussolini had skillfully used the press for his own ends …. Within a few years most of Italy’s newspapers were suppressed or put under party control. Some smaller newspapers claiming to be independent were still tolerated to give the appearance of freedom of opinion but they were a fig leaf ...Without any effective challenge Mussolini’s megalomania flourished. The crowds who gathered for his speeches cried “Duce, Duce, Duce! We are yours to the end.”
Germany, 1930s:
Goebbels’ priority was to exert immediate control of the press—the press, he instructed his staff, had to be “a piano, so to speak, in the hands of the government.” Germany’s newspapers had been “messengers of decay” that were harmful to the “beliefs, customs and national pride of good Germans.”
Within a year all of Goebbels’ goals were achieved. Three previously independent news services were merged into one state-directed national news agency, the German News Service. All journalism was subjected to the policy of Gleichschaltung—meaning that they had to toe the party line on all issues.
Excerpted from the Daily Beast.
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Today
“The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!”
Donald Trump
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As Dkos self-appointed Media Apologist, I take significant flack — at times — for pushing back against the ultimate burnt orange bonafides, the too cool for “corporate media” polemic. I see the “corporate media” denigration written in diaries or comments without any attempt to provide any context demonstrating what the comment even meant in stating it. Due disregard for big media is almost baked-in to the ethos around here, part of who we are, so to speak, and of course we all agree.
Fine.
Normally, I’d just roll my eyes, suppressing the wince that I am inclined to make in hearing a remark that seems so obviously a flip of the coin to the “liberal media” pout we see from the right. Not now, not this week, and not this year.
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Enemies of the People
"A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are — they are the enemy of the people," Trump told the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
While praising some reporters as honest, and pledging fealty to the First Amendment, Trump claimed that "the fake news media doesn't tell the truth." He said reporters should not be allowed to use anonymous sources, and "we're going to do something about it."
In my diary written in support of Robert Mueller, I noted that the community that vilified Robert Mueller happened to also be armed to the fking teeth, possessed a certitude based upon false-patriotism, one used to cover any action undertaken as one to “save” the country, bloodshed included. That same community is just as likely, indeed more likely, to hate and lash out against a brave reporter who found and brought-forth facts that threaten to take down their Messiah, “the one.”
It’s dead serious stuff.
When a run of the mill pizza place can be shot up because some fake news site reports that Hillary runs her child sex ring through it, how do you think Kurt Eichenwald sleeps, knowing that next time it won’t be a phone flashing a strobe light but flashes from the muzzle of a gun?
Eichenwald has broken many critical stories regarding Trump’s business penetration and exposure in Russia. Trump’s life would be much easier if Eichenwald weren’t around, Putin’s, too — for that matter. Putin has already killed journalists. I am not sure Trump wouldn’t, if he knew he could get away with it. He might not need to. If Trump supporters got the idea that Trump needed someone “gone” — how many would think it may be their job to do it?
Eichenwald is a member of the “corporate media.”
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Because I truly hate money and the idea of not struggling financially, I write for a living. The stuff I write requires me to explore some of the internet’s dark underbelly. I love the work, but it does force me into frequent contact with the “type” of people willing to listen to a story about Hillary running a child sex ring out of a pizza place. (And some are extremely good people fighting back harder than you and me in our orange confines. I admire them greatly.).
I am not going to subject you to some of the things I’ve seen, not worth your time. I’d rather just highlight the fact that the type who worry about the child sex-ring also hate “the corporate media” — they just call it “the liberal media.”” It is so ingrained with them, that a Slate story highlighting the portions of the Steele dossier that have been corroborated can be sneered at as “sheer nonsense,” with no further analysis or explanation. It is self-proving, it comes from Slate, it’s not worth their time.
We are much better, usually, but not good enough, in my opinion.
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This year, 2018, is going to be a year that decides the direction of this country for the next generation, at least that’s my belief. This coming year will send this country driving head-first into 21st Century American Fascism, or pull itself back from the brink by ushering in a wave of good democrats and splitting the conservative movement between deplorables and people who are just wrong on policy. We could reinstate big “D” and little “d” democratic values, and reintroduce the idea of “facts” as a baseline from which analysis springs, burying the “alternative fact” universe to history.
It’s dangerous because I don’t know which way it will go, neither do you.
I do know this. Trump hates facts, and he attempts to control the release of facts, daily, whether it’s through attempts to suppress a book, or the primal tweets about the “Fake News.” We do not help ourselves, our nation, or democrats by being too cool for mainstream news, Kurt Eichenwald news, hell, Jake Tapper news.
No one gets a free pass. If someone is wrong, by all means, raise the big orange banner and wave it far and wide, explain why. But, for this year, and especially as we get into the campaigns, let’s please attempt to support those institutions which are spending significant money and undertaking significant risk to get us those facts, CNN is not “Fake News.” It is definitely “corporate media” but that doesn’t mean it can’t be damned good corporate media.
This couldn’t be a more serious topic in these serious times..
In this struggle journalism is our last dependable line of defense. It’s no exaggeration to say that the health, security, and integrity of the republic is at stake. History is an unforgiving judge and, just as the history of Europe in the 1920s and ’30s reveals shameful failures in democratic institutions America’s current crisis will be judged by how effectively, or otherwise, the institutions designed to protect democracy worked.